


The Ones Left Behind

by Iamprongsie



Series: Last Ones Standing [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Everyone's sad and no one deserved this, F/M, Gallipoli Campaign, Gen, M/M, Rural Australia, Rural New Zealand, i'm sorry everyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-15 22:07:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17537177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iamprongsie/pseuds/Iamprongsie
Summary: Fives was invincible, picking her up when she fell, playing around with Dee and Hevy and Cutty, annoying mum for food. He never fell, never stumbled, was always there to pick them up when they did.And now he’s gone.~~~She worries that Anakin and Ben won’t make it back home. She knows she’s being stupid, the casualty lists that have been sent back have been short and the last time she heard, wherever they are is completely safe.





	1. Ahsoka

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fives was invincible, picking her up when she fell, playing around with Dee and Hevy and Cutty, annoying mum for food. He never fell, never stumbled, was always there to pick them up when they did. 
> 
> And now he’s gone.

Ahsoka wanders into the shop, dropping her coat by the door and running her hands over her braids.

“It’s raining a heap out there, it’s going to be slow here. Barriss said we could come over for dinner as well, she wants her shopping that she forgot the other day and her parents took the car to Auckland to get it fixed,” She calls into the back of the shop. Her mum doesn’t answer her, so she wanders around the shop looking for her. She can’t find her, so she closes the shop, gets back on her bike (petrol is rationed, which is annoying. Fives taught her to drive on his last leave, and she’s pretty good) and rushes home. 

Her mother greets her at the door, a pink telegram in her hand. Ahsoka stops short of the door and sprays mud onto her coat as she brakes and jumps off of her bike. 

“Who is it? Is it Dee?”

Dee was a year older than her, had enlisted at seventeen. He was her favourite brother (aside from Fives), purely because they were closer in age. She remembers beating up a couple of the bullies at school because they were picking on him, remembers sitting on one of them and Dee trying to pull her off. 

“It’s not Daniel.”

“Then who is it? Hevy? Cutty?”

Hevy was the second oldest, off training with Cutty in Egypt. He was grumpy and mean, but he was nice to his siblings. Cutty picked up their father’s Scottish accent, and apparently took after him as well. Ahsoka can barely remember him, but Fives assures her that he’d be proud of her. 

“No, it’s Frank. He’s dead.”

At first she just laughs it off. Nothing can kill Fives, nothing. He fell out of the tree on the Main Street and walked it off, even when Echo broke his arm. He’s tangled with enough snakes and various creepy crawlies for them, didn’t shed a tear at their dads funeral (at least until he got home and could cry without worrying their mother). He’s untouchable. 

Then it hits, and all she can feel is numb. Fives is gone. 

“It’s Fives, mum. He wanted to be called Fives!”

She’s yelling now, she can’t believe her brother is gone. Fives was invincible, picking her up when she fell, playing around with Dee and Hevy and Cutty, annoying mum for food. He never fell, never stumbled, was always there to pick them up when they did. 

And now he’s gone. 

Her mum is crying, she’s not far behind. She takes the telegram and reads it, notes the ‘killed in action’ and the signature of some random army officer. 

Ahsoka hates that telegram, hates what it says. It doesn’t tell her _how_ he died, whether he was at peace or scared (no one talked about it but Fives was always scared of the dark), if he was badly injured beforehand, if Echo was with him (she knows they were close, he’d told her as much. And besides, she didn’t care, she was too busy looking at the cute farm girl that came into the shop from time to time). She’ll never know these things, never see the place he died, never see his body. 

She gets back on her bike and races through the town, pretending the water on her face is from the rain and not her tears. Ahsoka ends up underneath the big eucalyptus tree in the Main Street. The fort she built with her brothers is still at the back of it, and she crawls into it and cries. 

Her brother is dead, he wasn’t untouchable. He’s gone, he’ll never come home with Echo and teach her how to drive properly, never tease her about Kaeden or Barriss, never drag her into the water when they go swimming and throw her around with their brothers. 

Then the telegram comes for Mrs Waititi next door. 

Echo is gone too.

Same deal, a pink telegram with the signature of an army officer and the words ‘killed in action’. Echo was like another brother to her, he was around their family constantly. 

The town holds their memorials together. Ahsoka watches the empty coffins be lowered into the graves, flags over both of them. Fives’ coffin has his stockwhip and his hat, Echo’s has his favourite book of poetry. Her mother moves to comfort Mrs Waititi, but she just shakes her off. She’s lost everyone, and her mother still has her and Dee and Cutty and Hevy. Steela stands next to her, as someone recites Echo’s favourite poem. 

The two of them were well known and well liked in the town. Fives was the head of the shearer’s union until he left, worked as a stockman, droving up and down the country. He had even been to Australia, and came back with stories of droughts and flash floods and mosquitoes the size of someone’s hand. Echo was quieter, caused less trouble with the big station owner. He was in the union, helped to run the show, even started the town library. 

Two letters arrive weeks after the memorial, when Ahsoka starts to think that the gaping wound her brother’s death has left in her heart has started to heal. One is addressed to Mrs Waititi, and she doesn’t even wait to open the one addressed to her and her mother before she’s racing next door. 

She skids into the kitchen, noting the black veil over Echo’s photo up on the wall. 

“Sorry, but I got a letter for you. It looks official.”

Mrs Waititi takes the letter, reads it, and passes it to Ahsoka. She slips her own letter behind it, and reads it. 

It says the usual things that one would expect from a letter like this, _Private Waititi was an excellent soldier, I’m proud to have served with him, it was all very sudden, he didn’t feel anything, died instantly, no pain_ etc etc. The postscript isn’t what she expected though- it’s from another person, sounds more caring and fond than anything official from the ANZAC forces would be. 

_If there’s anything I can ever do to help, when I come home, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Eric was a good man and a good friend, and I’m so incredibly sorry that he died under my command._

_Capt. Rex Fett_

She hands the letter back to Mrs Waititi, wiping tears from her eyes. She feels so alone, with Fives and Echo gone and her other brothers so far away. 

Ahsoka opens the letter addressed to her and her mother, as her mother walks in. 

“What’s that?”

“It’s a letter to us. From the army.” She knows she’s being snippy again, but she can’t help it. Mrs Waititi gives her a small smile and moves to put the kettle on. Her mother leans over her shoulder as Ahsoka reads the letter, mouth moving slowly as she reads the words. She knows that her mother left school at a young age to work as a maid at the big house, in the depression years. Her reading got better when the station owner’s daughter helped her learn, but she’s still slower than Ahsoka is. Girls in the town here don’t usually finish school, most of them leave early to get married or get jobs. That’s one of the things that her mother’s been adamant that Ahsoka won’t do, claiming that leaving school was one of the worst mistakes she ever made. Ahsoka always counters those arguments with the fact that her mother met her father when she was working, because he was a shearer. Those arguments always end in someone storming out, because Dee and Fives aren’t there to act as peacemakers anymore. 

It’s not that Ahsoka doesn’t like school, per se, it’s just that she’s always dreamed of going somewhere else. Fives filled her head with stories of Australia, and she wants to escape this small town and go anywhere else. She remembers going into Auckland once with Fives and Echo, and seeing the cars and high buildings and wanting so much more than their small country town, wanting more than a dead end job at the sheep station or at the local hotel. 

The letter reads similar to the one sent to Echo’s mother, but it’s dated earlier (makes sense, since Fives apparently died first), and it’s written by the Captain that wrote the postscript on Echo’s letter. It says the same things, that Fives was a good soldier and he died quickly. 

Ahsoka wonders if she’ll ever see her brother’s grave. She hates the fact that he’s not here anymore, can’t wander into the kitchen and help her with homework or get into a shouting match with the station owner about shearers rights (that one time he took her to the pub and then started a fight sticks in her memory), can’t take her and Dee driving or sneak out of their house to meet up with Echo somewhere. He won’t come back from droving ever again, full of stories about Australia and the big cities. 

He’s gone, and Ahsoka doesn’t think she can handle that.


	2. Padmé

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She worries that Anakin and Ben won’t make it back home. She knows she’s being stupid, the casualty lists that have been sent back have been short and the last time she heard, wherever they are is completely safe.

Padmé worries. She worries that the twins will get bitten by a snake or fall down a hole when they’re playing outside. She worries that the roof Ani promised he’d fix before the enlistment march will fall in on Shmi‘s head when she’s cooking. She worries that the farm will collapse when the price for cattle drops (not that that’s anytime soon, the War Effort means she’s selling off most of the herd each year for bully beef). She worries that the salary she’s been getting from the station in Ben’s absence will get cut off. She worries that Shmi will get attacked in town for her obvious German heritage (despite the name change, the Skywalkers and Ben have basically been ostracised within the town’s community). 

But most of all, she worries that Anakin and Ben won’t make it back home. She knows she’s being stupid, the casualty lists that have been sent back have been short and the last time she heard, wherever they are is completely safe. 

She’s used to noise in the house, or at least more people. When Ben and Anakin were home, the twins were louder and more exuberant, Shmi talked more, Padmé smiled more. Some of her happiest memories are of the six of them as a happy family, curled up on the couch with her husband and their lover, the twins playing together in front of the fire, Shmi knitting on the couch with a quiet smile. The twins are still loud and exuberant, but they miss their fathers. Shmi is quieter and more drawn, and more and more knitted items appear around the house. 

The casualty lists released from the Dardanelles are even worse than the ones from Europe. According to the last letters she got from Ben (Anakin scribbles postscripts onto the bottom of Ben’s letters; he’s never been much for writing), it’s been absolute hell. She knows he’s tried to keep the worst of it from her (the censors blacked out just about everything in his first letters) but Ben is such a wordsmith that she can almost see the battlefield in front of her. She knows firsthand about the blanket of flies, she’s lived in far north Queensland her entire life. The rest is completely alien to her. Ben spins stories of mountainous, scrubby land, covered in grassland. Pine trees rise above ridges where trenches are dug, and the hard mediterranean sun rises above it all. It must have been a pretty place, before the assault. 

She’s washing the dishes with Shmi after lunch when the twins come careening up to them, screeching something about a telegram. She’s dropping the plate into the sink and rushing outside before she realises it, barely remembering to grab a shilling from her purse to pay the kid. 

It’s Hans- Han (The Solo family also changed their name at the start of the war, Schmidtke left them open to even more hate from the town than Padmé and her family). 

“Telegram for you, Mrs Skywalker.” 

Padmé knows what the pink means, she knows one of them is gone. 

“Thank you, Han.” She hands him the shilling, and Han smiles tentatively at her and gets on his bike. 

Her hands are shaking as the opens the telegram. 

Ben is dead. Killed in action, gone, the army _convey deep regret and sympathy of their Majesties the King and Queen and the Commonwealth Government in loss that they and Army have sustained by death_. 

_Deep regret and sympathy, even from Their Majesties, can’t and won’t bring Ben back,_ she thinks. _Nothing will._

Tears blur her eyes as she walks into the kitchen and hands Shmi the telegram. Her mother in law looks shocked at first, then resigned. 

“Do we tell the kids?” 

“We’ll have to.”

“Shmi, I know that, but they’re so young.”

Shmi smiles quietly at her, and Padmé remembers that her husband was killed in the Boer War. 

“They’ll heal. They’re your children, they’re resilient. And he was their father, they have a right to know.”

Shmi’s right. They have a right to know, they need to know what happened. Not any of the details (even she doesn’t know those), though she wants to know what happened. Was Ben at peace? Was it fast? Was he in pain? Where’s Ani?

The twins come clattering in again, babbling excitedly about the dingo dog that sometimes begs food off of them. It’s probably from the nearby station, it looks well fed. Doesn’t stop it coming and begging scraps off of them though, and the twins love it to bits. Luke and Leia stop short when they see the telegram, and the expressions on their Mother’s and Grandmother’s faces. 

“Mumma, what’s wrong?” Luke looks scared, and Leia stands behind him protectively. 

“Darlings, I’ve got some bad news to tell you. Papa’s gone.” She can feel her heart breaking as she says it, Ben will never come back now. He won’t stay up late with her and Ani when the nightmares hit, won’t quote poetry when drunk, won’t kiss her awake. 

“Isn’t he gonna come back though? He and Daddy are off on an adventure!” Luke’s always been a cheerful child, and it breaks Padmé’s heart to have to explain this to him. Leia is silent, her gaze calculating. 

“He’s not coming back, I’m sorry.” 

Leia’s big brown eyes fill with tears, and she throws herself on her mother, howling. 

“Papa’s really gone?”

Luke joins the hug, tears streaming from his eyes. 

“He is.”

_Please, if there’s any happiness in the world,_ she thinks, _let Anakin come home. They need a father._

She can barely function for the next month. The twins are subdued, and usually she’d be glad of the rest but it’s come at such a high cost. She can’t even think about organising a memorial yet, even though she knows the only attendants would be her family, the Solo family, and Chewie the station dingo dog. The rest of the town hate her and her family, even though Anakin is fighting for the Australians. Her parents and sister live up in Cairns now, far enough away for the journey to not be worth it. 

So she lets it sit, lets the photos sit and collect dust while Ben’s books and possessions haunt her. 

Han shows up at her door again one day, while the twins are out shopping with Shmi.

“Sorry, Mrs Skywalker. It’s bad news again.”

He hands her the now-familiar pink telegram and rides off, presumably off to deliver more bad news. She can’t hold it against him, a job is a job, she just wishes that he had never delivered a pink telegram to her door. 

_Please let him be missing, at least missing means he might come back. Oh god, please let him be alive._

Ani is dead. Padmé collapses to the ground in tears, mourning her husband and the lost life she could have had. When she’s finally stopped crying, she fixes her hair and goes about the house. She can’t fall apart just because she’s now a widow twice over.There’s jobs to do, children to feed, socks to knit. 

When Shmi gets home, Padmé wordlessly hands her the telegram. Shmi reads it and sits down hard in the nearest chair, muttering in German. From the small amount of the language that Padmé can understand (Anakin sat her and Ben down at the table one day and taught them as much as he could remember. She remembers the way the light played through his hair, turning it almost the same shade of copper as Ben’s, remembers Ben’s early attempts at a beard, remembers life before it all fell apart), she’s talking to Anakin as if he was still here. 

“ _Meine Kind, ich vermisse dich sehr. Komme bitte zu mir zurück. Bitte, bitte._ ”

Suddenly, the older woman gets up and grips Padmé in a tight hug, sobbing into her shoulder. The twins run up and want to know what’s going on, and Padmé’s heart breaks all over again. These children, her wonderful, wonderful children have lost both of their fathers, and she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to be all three parents to them. At least she has Shmi, whoever raised Anakin successfully should be able to help raise his children. Padmé will have to get a job though, now that Ben _and_ Anakin are dead their salaries will have stopped. 

“Mumma? Mumma!” Leia stamps her foot and Padmé reaches down to hug her, gathering the five year old into her arms. She’s almost too heavy to lift up now, but Padmé need the extra comfort. 

“Yes, Princess?”

“Why are you crying?”

She can’t do it, she can’t break her children’s hearts all over again. 

“Luke, come here please.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“No, but I have some more bad news.”

Luke shuffles closer, wary of what she’s about to say. Padmé opens her mouth to speak, but she just starts crying again. When Ben died, she still had hope that Ani would make his way home. Now that hope is dead and gone, just like her husband and their lover. 

“Mumma, is Dad gone?”

Luke is a perceptive child, and Leia knows exactly what questions to ask. They take the renewed tears as a yes, and fall into her arms. They know that two of their parents are dead, they know their fathers aren’t coming back. This is the most heartbreaking thing Padmé has ever had to tell them, and she finds herself praying that they never have to hear something like this ever again. Her children are light, and laughter, and hope. They don’t deserve this, none of them did. 

Anakin and Ben don’t deserve an unmarked grave in enemy territory. Shmi doesn’t deserve hate from the town because of who her family was. The twins don’t deserve rapidly fading memories of their fathers, never to be replaced. 

No-one deserves this.


End file.
